This is an excerpt from my book, What Would You Do? A Child's Guide to Staying Safe in a World of Strangers. I have posted an excerpt from part of chapter 5, which is a reference for parents, grandparents, an other child caregivers:
Parenting
in these increasingly complex and troubled times is challenging to say the
least. Recent headlines of child
abductions and of children who have been the victims of sexual predators
heighten parental concern and make the challenge an even more difficult
one. How can you as a parent protect
your children from such harm without making them afraid and distrustful of
people in general? It is a difficult
balance, but it can be done.
The key is to
teach your children, in a non-threatening way, to exercise caution, to be
empowered, and to trust their instincts.
You must start by retiring the phrase, stranger danger. Such an
expression can make your children think that all strangers are dangerous and
bad. That is a misconception, of
course. It is necessary, however, that
you help children determine whom they can trust. The best way to do that is to teach your
children to think of categories of people.
The first two
categories include people they don’t know at all and people they kind of know
or have seen before. The third category
includes people that you, as a parent, know well and trust to be around your
children. Teach your children to treat
the first two categories as strangers and to use caution. Help them to understand that the first two
groups of people may be good people who intend no harm, but, to be safe, they
should be careful around them. Teach them to trust only the third group of
adults. Give them a list of at least three safe
adults, in addition to you, upon whom they can depend in an emergency. The first chapter of this guidebook refers to
the list of safe adults as their ICE (In
case of emergency) Support Group. By
creating this group, you will have taken the first step in empowering your
children and better ensuring their safety in a world of strangers.
This guidebook
teaches children to take a proactive role in staying safe by having them
brainstorm solutions to possibly threatening situations. Such a solve-it-yourself strategy can make
children feel more in control of frightening topics they hear addressed in the
nightly news. The precautions, safety
strategies, and self defense techniques taught in the handbook are measures
that are encouraged by law enforcement officials and networks of organizations
dedicated to child safety, such as the Federal Bureau of Investigation, The
Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and other child safety resources.
Parental rules for
children can be varied from one family to the next. So be sure to review and discuss with your
children the strategies suggested in the guidebook and appropriately adapt them
to your own circumstance and age of children.
